Tom,

Keddiewye's experiance with the sound equiped version does not surprise me. A loco that small with sound is bound to be light weight to allow room for the speaker.

If you can do without sound, a DC version is sure to perform better and will accept a DCC decoder with no problem.

Sheldon

Gene,

I glue my track down with PolySeamSeal brand adheasive caulk. Saw the technique in an MR article years ago. This brand of adheasive caulk is silicone free and works very well.

Sheldon

At least they let you try out for the choir! My singing would bring a new level of rejection on American Idol.

But maybe the mear threat will get us some action.

Sheldon

Nigel,

Maybe, but there should be some creative way around that. Many have been begging for real supply of extra parts for some time. A complete "service kit" of psrts would surely have a suitable value ad.

And, I will ask again, what happenes to all the warranty returns that don't get repaired? I have an idea, they could give them to me and would run a parts division for them.

Sheldon

Gene,

It seems that all the new Heavies with sound have the Delta truck included extra and all the new Santa Fe's with sound have the older style included extra.

I observed this at one of our local shops that sells/stocks a lot of Bachmann. The new sound locos are in clear view packaging and regardles of road name, they all had an extra trailing truck.

If they are making all those, surely they can send Phily a hundred or so.

I don't know if newer runs of any of these locos without sound have them as the packaging appears to be the same as before for the non sound units.

My offer stands, I will buy surplus Deltas from anyone not planning to use theirs

Sheldon

OK,

Anyone who buys a new Heavy Mountain with sound and is not going to use the extra Delta trailing truck, I will be happy to purchase them from you.

That encludes the Bachmann service department, who I plan to write to about this soon.

Sheldon

Bill,

I agree, I worked in serval of our local shops years ago. Way back in 1980 or so, one shop owner I worked for considered the future of the hobby shop business and even back then we concluded that with the growth in the number of products, in all the various hobbies, trains, planes, models, etc.: and the growth in discounting that the only real future was to be big, buy direct and provide both service and price.

That has happened. There are good shops, with fairly complete inventories, and low prices that still provide that personal service. Where I live we have several within a reasonable drive. What good is a little mom and pop store that only has a small sampling of the vast range of products out there? If I can't look at it and touch it before I buy it at the LHS (because he has to special order everything) I might as well buy it mail order.

Any good shop needs to be big enough to buy the product competitively, sell it competitively, have a representitive inventory and provide good service. Those that do not see this whole picture will go by the wayside.

And while they do a vast mailorder business, Trainworld, MB Klein, and many other big mail order sources ARE brick and mortar stores. If you happen to live near them you can walk in and buy the same stuff at the same prices as their magizine ads.

In fact, their mail order business is often the reason they can have a brick and mortar store with those kind of prices. And still have friendly personal service!

Sheldon

My appoligies, since you did not give the web address in your orginal post, the search I did yielded a different business with the same name. Somewhere on the west coast. Their prices where just below retail, maybe 15% at most.

Sheldon

Mark,

No doubt you recieved good service from this gentleman and his company, however based on the prices on his web site, I can see why he is getting out of the hobby business.

It is a competitive world and the days of retail or near retail prices are long gone in the hobby business.

If his R/C plane/car prices are as high as his train prices, I don't know how he made it this long. That hobby is even more cut throat then the model train business.

I was just in one of our local shops yesterday that sells a lot of Bachmann, they had over 300 spectrum locos on the shelves. It appeard they had just recieved a big shipment from Phily. The prices are in line with Trainworld, very competitive.

Sheldon

Dear Bach Man,

Any chance of getting some of those delta trailing trucks that are now being supplied extra in the newest runs of the Heavy Mountain.

I'm sure they would sell well. I would take at least 6, I know steamgene wants some.

I'll bet half the people who have bought Mountains and 2-6-6-2's would buy them to upgrade their locos.

This is another example of the need for a real parts department.

Sheldon

Paul,

I can assure you from personal experiance that it is the same circuit board.

Sheldon

Current Score:

Still holding at about the same percentages

DCC  45%

DC    55%

With about 15% of the DC crowd interested in computerized block control.


Question for Jim Banner,

You did compertized block control in the past, correct?

Have you looked at Oak Tree Systems or Signal Research?

Both of which use a cab for every block rather than doing any high current switching. I know you are happy with DCC, but was just interested in you thoughts

Sheldon

Bill,

To ad a little to the good info from others, yes in many cases the road loco would switch out RPO, express or baggage cars as needed while the other cars sat undisturbed in the station. Usually the sidings these cars needed to go to, or come from, where close by and arranged for the ease of these moves. If not, the cars may just be set on a siding until the train pulled out, then moved to the Post Office, REA warehouse, etc, by a switcher.

This is particluarly true of along the line stops, but could also be the case at the beginning or end of the line for that train. In fact, train crews prided themselves on their ablity to uncouple and couple to the train in the station without the passengers ever feeling the slightest bump. You can still watch this daily at the Strasburg Railroad.

I don't know if I would call a .38 revolver "heavily armed" but r0bert is right, RPO workers where ALL armed, up to the vary last day, an no one other than Post Office employees where allowed in the RPO while there was mail in it. The end doors where bolted from the inside and this is the main reason they would be at the head end. No one, not even the train crew, could get through there for any reason.

BUT, many railroads put sealed REA express cars, be they baggage cars or express box/reefer cars, in front of the RPO in a case where the RPO would stay with the train, but the express cars would need to be switched out. These cars would not have any passenger baggage, just th3 equal of the UPS tractor/trailer today.

And yes head end cars did help isolate paying passengers from the noise and smoke. But the big irony of that is that in the east, most of the fanciest trains had little or no head end equipment. Usually just a combine that was passenger baggage and crew dorm and maybe one RPO.

Sheldon

Tom,

I don't do sound or DCC, but I will give a big yes to Proto2000. I have a large fleet of Proto Diesels (45 or 50 at last count) and they are great. Great detail, great running and an great value if you shop around.

Proto diesels, Athearn diesels and Spectrum steam account for most of my motive power and I am very pleased with all in both price and performance.

Sheldon

OK,

The current score:

DCC 8

DC 10

This is about what I said in my many posts about this subject, DCC is a large minorty, something more than 1/3 but less than half.

Admittedly this is a small sample, but these percentages seem to match the other modelers I know and and what shop owners have related.

This has never been an inexpensive hobby once you get more involved, but if it gets to the point that just getting started is both expensive and complex, which may have hapened allready, the number of new modelers will be limited. That is not a good thing.

DCC can be very expensive, and it is an invisable expense. It does not add a locomotive or freight car or structure to your layout.

Again, I am not against DCC or sound in general. If I was modeling On30 I would have both DCC and sound. But for my goals in HO they are not desirable or cost effective. And I can't imagine why anyone in N scale would want the problems of fitting decoders in those locos.

And, dare I say, if you just depend on ready to run products to solve problems like N scale decoder installation, then it becomes more like setting up Marklin, not building a model railroad in the long standing tradition of this hobby. (It was hard, but I avoided the dreaded "serious modeler" phrase)

And computerized block control is offering a high tech choice that solves the same old fashioned limitations of DC cab control that DCC does, just in different ways with different trade offs.

Just remember, just my opinion.

Sheldon